Re: 2005 Called, They Want Their Technology Back

But given their urge to merge, what they SHOULD have done was to let Nextel take over Sprint, and change Sprint to running the Nextel Way, not trashing Nextel by running it the Sprint way. If only they'd let Nextel rule the roost, today we'd have something to be happy about, a properly integrated communications system that truly magnified the best resources of both Nextel & Sprint. But noooooo!

Back to the topic of this news release, regarding the new Qualcom CDMA-based PTT they are rolling out next month, they keep saying "feature rich" but I can only see one feature that it will have that the current iDEN PTT doesn't, that is the so-called "Push-To-X" functionality (which, BTW, Motorola has had available for YEARS on iDEN, but the bozos running Sprint refused to fully implement on Nextel).

And one thing the new CDMA PTT "Sprint Direct Connect" WON'T have is the feature we call "robustness", the ability of the iDEN PTT system to keep running during regional disasters when every other cellular system running through the PSTN is so overloaded it's useless - a level of genuine, real-world robustness that no other US cellular provider has been able to match, and the new Sprint Direct Connect will not be able to match, either. Nextel should have hired MC Hammer for their ads, singing "You can't touch this!" ;-)

Although Sprint has botched every attempt so far, I guess hope springs eternal that they will do something right THIS time, and the new Sprint Direct Connect will be good enough to keep the remaining few Nextel stalwarts from leaving for Verizon or ATT.

As for me, I'm hanging in with iDEN using my new i365 until they throw the breakers off on iDEN towers.